pay me for friendship?

I wonder if other English teachers feel as I do?

Maybe English conversation teachers do... the one on one teachers.

It's weird. Please pay me to go out to a café and speak to you for an hour. But even weirder than that, is the realization that you are asking people to pay you to be YOUR friend for an hour every week.

I feel this way after being reimbursed for my services(?) and am leaving the café. This surreal energy envelopes me as I try to digest what just occurred. On the one hand, I had an interesting conversation whilst correcting pronunciation. But the other won't shake the fact that I really just had an interesting friendly conversation revolving around literature, geography and semantics.

If you consider me your friend (and don't pay me, that is) you probably have heard me wax retarded on all three subjects. People offering to pay me to wax retarded is almost a dream come true. Right up there with a job that paid you to read. I would be really good at that job. Not necessarily editing books, just some philanthropist who wanted to pay me to read. I devour books as though they were my only source of nutrition.

I recently received The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. I started it on Wednesday night and finished it on Friday. (470-ish pages) Even though it feels like it's going to be predictable, the plot twists and turns turn the book into an awesome read. On Friday noon I picked it up and only put it down for an hour during my class. I read until I had finished it; I physically could not put it down. I don't know about you but that's rare for me.

So, to sum up:
I teach Conversational English,
It makes me uncomfortable,
I enjoy literature, geography, and liguistics,
and The Shadow of the Wind is a great read.

Class dismissed.